Shallow Grave (1994)

February 10, 1995

FILM REVIEW;
Fear and Loathing In Upscale Glasgow

By JANET MASLIN

Published: February 10, 1995

"What on earth could make you think we'd want to share a flat like this with someone like you?" ask Alex (Ewan McGregor), Juliet (Kerry Fox) and David (Christopher Eccleston) of a prospective roommate. Which instantly raises the question of why an audience would want to spend two hours in the company of a trio like this. But "Shallow Grave," Danny Boyle's mordant, brittle film about Glasgow yuppies who evolve into killers, uses the "shallow" in its title quite deliberately. Mr. Boyle is way ahead of his viewers in grasping his characters' emptiness.

Indeed, he may be too far ahead for his own good. An obviously talented visual stylist, Mr. Boyle is more at ease with the bright, bold, increasingly coldblooded imagery of "Shallow Grave" than with the personalities of its three principals. A sky-high level of misanthropy overwhelms his film in ways that prove more sour than droll, despite the presence of skillful actors and a bizarrely enveloping plot. Mr. Boyle's nasty ingenuity recalls the playful early days of the Coen brothers, but his own sense of the absurd is less witty or acute than that.

As a tale of death and expediency, "Shallow Grave" also invites comparison to Alfred Hitchcock, who dealt with a wayward corpse throughout "The Trouble With Harry" and once (on one of his television shows) let a heroine bludgeon her husband with a leg of lamb before feeding the murder weapon to the police. But even at his most ghoulish, Hitchcock never forgot to invite his viewers' involvement in ways that Mr. Boyle pointedly ignores. These may be jaded times, but we're not yet beyond requiring violence to be leavened by some element of humanity, no matter how macabre or dark. It's not enough to provide brilliantly artful back lighting when one character is busy carving up another with a handsaw.

The interloper who sets the three roommates to sawing is named Hugo. Appearing at their apartment after the film's opening sequence, which shows them contemptuously grilling would-be roommates, Hugo (Keith Allen) impresses the trio by displaying his own diffidence, as when he describes himself as a novelist who is in search of the self. Actually, what he is is a thug with a suitcase full of money. And when he next turns up dead and naked on a red-draped bed in the apartment (one of Mr. Boyle's more casually shocking images), he poses a problem. The roommates want Hugo's money, but they don't want any identifiable traces of Hugo, like his hands or feet or face.

As with many a story involving ill-gotten gains, this one leads to discord among friends. Hugo's demise serves to expose and unleash the tensions that have shaped life within this previously happy home. And there is great potential for conflict among this oddly matched threesome: insolent Alex, a wisecracking journalist; blithe Juliet, a doctor (like John Hodge, who wrote the screenplay); tightly wound David, a prim, withdrawn accountant. Sexual feelings within the group are bound to be volatile, since they remain unexpressed.

David, the character who appears to be driven most crazy by Hugo's aftereffects, is the film's most striking figure, which is not to say that there's anyone here to like. David takes the death more seriously than Alex, which leads to quarreling; he drills holes in the ceiling and hides above them, which means voyeuristic peeks into Juliet's bedroom as well as nifty, beam-weaving lighting effects upstairs. Alex and Juliet get drunk and silly, which pushes David closer to the edge. Sitting around the house, the three share increasingly strained mealtimes and watch "The Wicker Man," a dizzy pagan-ritual extravaganza that's exactly right for this crowd.

But as Mr. Boyle sows the seeds of discord, he also demonstrates that there's nothing at stake. It doesn't matter where the money winds up, or how these roommates get along. It doesn't matter whether the story's minor characters, who are uniformly grotesque, will become suspicious about life inside the household. As Hugo unwittingly demonstrates, it barely even matters whether anyone in this story lives or dies.

If "Shallow Grave" lacks the wicked allure of other icy-veined films like "The Grifters" or "The Last Seduction," it's also too visually savvy to ignore. Mr. Boyle's flair with everything from sinister-looking hardware to the bright, contrasting walls of the threesome's lair is sharply evident. Too evident, finally. There's as much to say about the paint job in this apartment as there is about the people.

"Shallow Grave" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It includes both explicit and implied violence, as well as profanity and graphic nudity.
SHALLOW GRAVE
Directed by Danny Boyle; written by John Hodge; director of photography, Brian Tufano; edited by Masahiro Hirakubo; music by Simon Boswell; production designer, Kave Quinn; produced by Andrew Macdonald; released by Film Four International. Running time: 92 minutes. This film is rated R.
WITH: Kerry Fox (Juliet Miller), Christopher Eccleston (David Stephens), Ewan McGregor (Alex Law) and Keith Allen (Hugo).